The weather for Saturday looked a little dubious with a forecast of low 50's with clouds and rain. The plan was to head out to Pipestone early and try to avoid the cloud buildup during the early afternoon.
After stopping at McD's drive through for a quickie egg McMuff, it was time to go ver the pass and descend into the little banana belt that is Whitehall. That area always seems to be a little warmer and tends to dry out much faster than everywhere else.. The approach drive was promising (the roads were completely dry). On arriving at the parking lot, I saw these signs for a race. As it turns out there are moto races all weekend. Fortunately they were in one designated area so it was easy to avoid the ruckus.
The trails were relatively dry with a rare section of 5-10 ft where there was still some snow. I did not venture to any of the higher elevation trails knowing that they would still be snow-packed. The big bummer was the discovery that the motos found and disregarded the non-motorized trails. Unfortunately they are tracking out what used to be nice smooth singletrack. The topper is that they removed the signs that indicate they are not open to motos...
After stopping at McD's drive through for a quickie egg McMuff, it was time to go ver the pass and descend into the little banana belt that is Whitehall. That area always seems to be a little warmer and tends to dry out much faster than everywhere else.. The approach drive was promising (the roads were completely dry). On arriving at the parking lot, I saw these signs for a race. As it turns out there are moto races all weekend. Fortunately they were in one designated area so it was easy to avoid the ruckus.
The trails were relatively dry with a rare section of 5-10 ft where there was still some snow. I did not venture to any of the higher elevation trails knowing that they would still be snow-packed. The big bummer was the discovery that the motos found and disregarded the non-motorized trails. Unfortunately they are tracking out what used to be nice smooth singletrack. The topper is that they removed the signs that indicate they are not open to motos...
I did find some new trail that was fun to explore and will be good to explore further once the trails dry up a little more. I am hoping they will link into some of the other trails further west so that the road can be completely avoided.
It ended up being about a 3 hour ride and a little over 20 miles of trail/road that included familiar trails with the obligatory views of old homesteads/shacks and also some newly discovered action...the best part was the weather held out too!
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